Stem Cell Breakthrough, Sort Of

In a study published today in the journal Stem Cells, scientists made embryonic clones of two men.

Not to be a cynical, but what’s the big deal?

The procedure, in which researchers from stem cell company Stemagen removed nuclei from the skin cells of two adult men and put them inside a fertilized and emptied-out egg, is already known to scientists and the public. It’s the first step of cloning — either therapeutic cloning, in which embryos provide stem cells for potential medical use, or reproductive cloning, in which embryos grow into a new person.

Both therapeutic and reproductive cloning are still in their early stages — the latter because it’s globally abhorred, the former because it’s scientifically tricky. If scientists can figure out how to make viable embryonic stem cells from a clone, the human race would be a lot closer to personalized stem cell treatments, with new limbs and disease cures promised to anyone with a few spare skin flakes and enough money to foot the bill.

But this hasn’t yet been done. Korean scientist Woo-Suk Hwang excited the world when he claimed to have pulled it off, but he was lying. Though Stemagen said their cloned embryos could be used to make stem cells, they didn’t actually try.

On the plus side, unlike earlier cloners, Stemagen made their clones with skin cells from an adult rather than embryonic stem cells or cells from ovaries. If Stemagen’s clones do turn out to be a viable source for stem cells, the procedure will be relatively practical. But that’s a frontier-sized "if" — and so long as it’s unresolved, this study really doesn’t deserve the sort of wall-to-wall coverage it received today.

Indeed, science journalists seem to know this. Witness the lead quote from the Associated Pressstory:

"I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new," said
Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He said the "next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line" from cloned embryos. "This has yet to be achieved."

Melton also toldThe Scientist that "it would be hard to call this a major advance."

So why the coverage? Well, it’s a stem cell story and there’s cloning involved. Those are hot words in any season, and especially lately, with advances in other stem cell techniques (here and here) whetting public appetite for news of potentially miraculous biotechnologies. It’s also hard for journalists to tell their editor, "Everyone’s going to cover this, but it’s not a big deal."

Neither does it help that scientists want to wash away the legacy of Woo-Suk Hwang, whose fraud jaded millions. But over-reporting an advance that could still fall short makes another disillusionment more likely.

Update: Reuters headlined their story, "U.S. company claims cloned humans and made stem cells." The lead notes that Stemagen made its clones in the "eventual hope of making matched stem cells for patients," but the writer — who almost certainly didn’t pick the headline, and thus didn’t realize she’d have to correct for a false assertion — never specifically says that stem cells weren’t made.

Update Two: Rick Weiss at the Washington Post looked at this in terms of stem cells rather than cloning; from that perspective, he said, the study was significant, for it shows that few technical barriers remain to full human cloning.